Web-designers and photo-savvy teens alike, everybody needs to edit a picture once in a while. Photoshop is great, but expensive and relatively hard to use. Alternatives like Gimp can solve the first problem, but sometimes we’re just too lazy to learn stuff. That’s why you turn to the interweb. Here are some great (and not-so-great) online image editing apps. I stumbled upon most of them using the MakeUseOf.com Directory, neat tool for anybody who’s curious.

Ranked in order of [estimated] deliciousness.

1. Picnik

Amazing!

2. Mashface Beta

Littered with face parts, Mashface gives a strong first impression. The home page has an introduction video featuring so-called mashes of Barack Obama and John McCain, along with some other guy I don’t know, maybe Tom Cruise. The site’s purpose, to literally mash different faces together, is quite clever, and the interface is well-suited for it.

3. PhotoFunia

This one lets you add you or one of your pictures to many different settings, from Time Square to Angelina Jolie’s shirt. Some of the options use face detecting technology, allowing you to turn yourself into a lot of things, like Santa Claus, a Jedi, or Mona Lisa.

4. DrPic

Equipped with the basic weapons of edit, DrPic is a relatively basic editor.

5. Picture2Life

Like DrPic, it has all the basics, and a little bit more.

6. PICFONT

Lets you add text to images. Helpful, but not so special.

7. FACEinHOLE

Very similar to PhotoFunia. It lets you add your own face to different pictures. Its not as advanced as PhotoFunia, though.

8. TEXT-IMAGE

Very simple design with a simple purpose.

Comment below! Share your opinions and suggestions, and please consider sharing this article!

People watch hundreds of millions of videos every day,

and according to the YouTube Fact Sheet, ten hours of video are uploaded every minute. Wow.

Launched in 2005, YouTube.com has grown to be one of the most visited websites of all time. But can you guess who owns it? Yes, of course! Google! Adding yet another hit to there ever-growing collection of websites. As result of the crazy amount of traffic YouTube has drawn, I wonder, “Why do people spend hours a day, watching random videos?” That question can be answered in many different ways, some of which we’ll not get into.

Not unlike many other websites (and all other media, as well), YouTube has three key purposes. Each one draws a different type of audience. Some videos are more attractive than others (i.e. How To Make A Potato Gun, a helpful guide, might be more popular than Extreme Action Sports Movie, some random kid’s skateboarding video). But the three purposes, or functions, of YouTube have rocketed it to the top of the interweb, as my mother, Andrew Wilkinson, and I call it.

YouTube is to:

1. Entertainment is the chief motive of YouTube. Drawing a plethora of video-trollers out of the woodwork, entertainment can be accounted for as the #1 purpose of online video.
2. Information is in high-demand. Always. Many people come to YouTube as a guide. The hundreds of thousands of How-To videos provide a quick and easy outlet for the incompetent (or not) American (or not) to access information.
3. I totally forgot what the last one was. Oh well!

I’ve turned to YouTube for all two and a half of these reasons. Entertainment? Actually, that one not too much. The only time I used YouTube for that was before I discovered Hulu, the TV’s killer.  Nowadays, in an effort to resist the epidemic of video-addiction, I rarely visit YouTube, despite its helpfulness when assembling a SpringFree™ trampoline. I actually know people who spend the entire day trolling the site, hoping they find that precious video, the video that’s actually interesting. Okay, maybe not entire days, but a long time.

In the spirit of the holiday season, happy viewing, merry Tube-ing, and have a good time!

I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but Walt Disney pictures is an INSANELY successful business. The company is so broad, that it can afford to exclusively advertise its own products on its networks. Considering most other networks rely almost solely on advertising revenue, that is quite an accomplishment. How can they do this? Well, first we must ask, who is Walt Disney?

Born on December 5, 1901, Mr. Disney grew up on a farm. In high school, Disney was a cartoonist for the school newspaper, and later moved on to create advertisements for a company in Kansas City. There, he met one of his very good friends, who he later opened an art company with, but the friend left the company, and Disney assumed full control over their business. His career was fueled by his instinctive love of art and drawing, which proved to be a glorious trait.

Walt’s cartoons were a hit in Kansas, and inspired Walt to move to our entertainment capital, Hollywood, California. And the rest is history. Famous cartoons like Mickey Mouse rocketed him to the Hollywood Walk of Fame and coined him as the father of animation. This led to the massive franchise we know today as Disney.

In modern times, the Disney company has adapted to a new kind of market. And they’ve adapted quite well, considering their 35 billion dollar revenue and plethora of international fame. Disney has expanded, as well. They’ve had hundreds of movies produced, including long-time American favorites, such as Pinocchio, Snow White & The Seven Dwarfs, and Peter Pan. As a result of this, the Disney company now has hundreds of branches and underlying franchises, such as the Pirates of the Carribean movie series, whose fame can single-handedly provide another multimillion dollar asset, and the pattern continues. This is the exact framework that allows the Disney channel to advertise its own products, as opposed to selling ad-time to other companies/products.

Walt would be proud. Or would he?

Social networking sites, such as Twitter & Facebook, are becoming increasingly popular. One of their most trendy features are status updates. In moderation, they can be fun, informative, and useful, but for many people they have become a daily, hourly, or minutely routine, and an addiction. One of my friends went to Lollapalooza in Chicago last summer, and was agitated by her boyfriend, who persistently updated his Twitter statuses while Rage Against The Machine was playing. I’ll occasionally post a few updates, but I try to fight the onslaught of unnecessary information (Sorry people, I don’t wanna know when you’re getting a pedicure, or going to the mall, or whatever).

Okay, you might be thinking, “Spencer, that’s so hypocritical. You run a tech site and blog!” But despite my interest in technology and the internet, sometimes I wish I live in the 1950’s, where you called your friends down the street, and there was no MySpace (ew). And things like Ebooks are the bane of my existence. Why can’t you just read a d@!# book! Yes, I can understand the ‘new possibilities’ of having a digital and compact ebook reader. For example, you can take hundreds of books on one little chip, or subscribe to newspapers, saving hundreds of trees. But is it really necessary? I once heard somebody say, “Historians are screwed.” This is (technically) true. Many many parts of our culture are being digitized, therefore decreasing their lifespan from 2,000 years (a book), to 5-10 years (a memory chip). This whole post may sound cynical; I guess I inherited a little misanthropist gene ;D

I guess the world is just changing. What do you think?

Examples of Social Media sites. This is just a fraction of the lot of them..

I’ve posted before about the sheer awesome (yes, that’s a noun) that engulfs me every time I visit BarackObama.com. It is definitely one of the best websites of all time, regardless of your political views. But unfortunately, now when I visit it, I have a sort of eerie feeling. I don’t know entirely why, but obviously it has something to do with the election being over.

Not long ago, the Obama camp launched Change.gov, office of the president-elect. Its much more official looking, with a less vibrant color scheme and not as many cool features. Overall its just less exciting. Don’t get me wrong; Its still great, just a sad comparison. One woman I interviewed says, “I think its supposed to be more informational and less flashy.” I happen to agree. The new site serves a different purpose. Let me know what you think.

Here are some screenshots. Click to enlarge.